1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to micellar solutions made up of water, surfactant, hydrocarbon, and optionally cosurfactant and/or electrolyte and contain lamellar micelles.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Zlochower and Schulman, in the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, Vol. 24, No. 1, May, 1967 pp. 115-124 define a liquid crystal obtained from a composition consisting of amino methyl propanol, amino butanol oleate, water and benzene. The initial solution, i.e. before the liquid crystal, is an isotropic solution consisting of spherical droplets of chloroform in water. This is titrated with chloroform to form the liquid crystal and upon further addition of the chloroform, a second isotropic solution is formed with the chloroform as the external phase.
Canadian Pat. No. 921,690 teaches an oil recovery process using a micellar system containing 2-16% surfactant, 3-20% hydrocarbon, 1-5% alcohol and the remainder water which exhibits birefringence, shear thickening behavior at low shear rates and shear thinning behavior at high shear rates, etc. These systems do not exhibit retro-viscous properties as do Applicants' compositions.
Both oil-external and water-external micellar dispersions (this term includes microemulsions, micellar solutions, etc.) are described in the art, e.g. see U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,254,714 to Gogarty et al.; 3,497,006 to Jones et al.; 3,506,070 and 3,507,071 to Jones. In general, it is known that both oil-external and water-external micellar dispersions can be obtained using petroleum sulfonates having average equivalent weights within the range of 350 to about 525, the micellar dispersion also contains hydrocarbon, water, cosurfactant (can be alcohol, ester, amide, ether, aldehyde containing 1-20 carbon atoms) and/or electrolyte. These dispersions generally exhibit a decrease in viscosity upon increase in flow rate.